From the story: The Australian’s overheated time warp misses half of 2010 which had a NOAA press release in it below the fold, Dr. Richard Keen weighs in and does a spot check of the data from his own NOAA station (he’s an official observer).
And if you find this map hard to look at, you aren’t alone in seeing spots.
Keen writes:
Lawrimore’s comment…
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north. Also, the Great Lakes aren’t freezing as early or as much. “As cold outbreaks occur, cold air goes over the Great Lakes, picks up moisture and dumps on the Northeast,” he says.”
…shows a complete lack of understanding of weather (which makes up climate).
East coast snows are caused by lows off the coast, and if the storms move north, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC et al. find themselves in the warm sectors of the lows, and enjoy warm southerly winds and rain.
Furthermore, during the snow storms, the winds are from the northeast bringing moisture from the Atlantic (hence the name “nor’easter” for these storms); very little of the moisture comes from the Great Lakes. One of Philadelphia’s snowiest winters was 1978-79, when the Lakes were all but frozen over. Along the east coast, a region that averages very near freezing during the winter, the limiting factor for snow storms is not moisture, but temperature. Most storms are rain.
Now, the spot check.
NOAA’s calculation of the global temperature is based on their analysis of departures at 2000 or so grid points. One of those points included my weather station at Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, a location with no UHI or other troublesome influences. The NOAA map of June anomalies for the US, based on an unknown selection of stations, has Coal Creek sitting on the +4F contour.
The Coal Creek record is long enough to calculate 30-year normals, and June 2010 comes in at +1.0F above normal.
That’s 3 degrees less than the NOAA estimate for the same location, which is the difference between June being in the top 3 or being in the middle third. Now, this is simply a spot check of one of NOAA’s 2000 grid points, but it leads to the question of how far off are the other grid points?
Dr. Richard Keen
In all fairness, I think Lawrimore was talking about two different events – snow from Nor’Easters, and lake effect. I do not think he was trying to say open water over the Great Lakes would enhance east coast snowfall. At least that was my impression.
HOWEVER.
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north,” is such a stupid statement. There’s no other way to put it.
Again, these storms are a frequent occurrence in the Northeast in the Winter (I grew up in NH and now live outside of DC). BUT, for Baltimore/Washington to actually get any snowfall from these storms requires…wait for it! – UNSEASONABLY COLD WEATHER! Just like we had last winter in December and February!
Now I ask you, how are these SNOW storms going to increase in frequency in the WARMING climate!?!? Sigh.
1800 data points on the map (25×72) and using 5.1×10^8 km^2 surface area for the globe gives you 283333km^2 per station… Seems like we need a few more data points. It sure wouldn’t hurt to have some properly located stations in there either.
looking at the colder than average oceans, it is clear that the hottest year claim is extremely unlikely. you simply are not going to have cold oceans and very hot land.
There is a red spot on my place (SH)…I wish it could be real, but, sadly, it is not. So, the above graph is another LIE.
If you are at home right now you can watch the British open live. No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record. Every last one of them is bundled up! It looks like November over there right now. Wool caps, hands in pockets, sweaters, wind breakers and winter coats!
Go on…take a peek…you know you want to….
Lake effect snow strikes Buffalo, NY and Muskegon, MI, but usually peters out within 100 miles of the shoreline.
There is no way that Great Lakes moisture is bringing snow to the Northeast. I live in Lansing, MI, and it can be snowing a foot in Grand Rapids, but we get nothing. You can watch the NOAA weather radar and see the lake effect snow.
So it’s warmer….WHO CARES!
The gradient on the U.S. map seems large at your location. Just go a little north and there is cooling. Thus it is likely that smoothing effects could account for the discrepancy.
What is the source for the U.S. map? I did not see it on the NOAA site. The global dot map is not precise enough to draw any conclusions about your location.
BTW, on the global dot map for Jan-June 2010 it looks like Colorado cooled.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/images/map-blended-mntp-201001-201006.gif
And the cold in Florida???????????
I’m just cherry-pickin’ here…but I counted dots (which I’m qualified to do) and found that there are more dots on the average line and below than there are above. It even looks like there’s more area under the average line than above. Somehow, it doesn’t result in a convincing argument to me that it’s warming, certainly not at a statistically significant rate if at all.
Alright, as a 25% skeptic (and 75% convinced that AGW is a real phenomenon), let’s suppose that the measurements (even with some errors) as correct, and that 2010 is indeed the warmest year on record, if even by a few tenths of a degree. To what would the skeptics attribute this warmth? We are still a few years away from the higher total solar irradiance that the solar max will bring in 2013, and the last El Nino, while strong, was not as strong as 1998. So where is the warmth coming from, if not from AGW caused in increases in GHG? I keep hearing some skeptics say that the world is cooling, etc., but the leveling in the growth of global temps that we HAD seen in the last few years can easily be attributed to the long and deep solar minimum, but now temps seem to be going right back up, just as GCM’s would say will happen with AGW.
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends? (and I think it is a huge cop out to say the measurements are wrong). There’s just too many other global temperature measurements that validate the general upward trends to think that every independent weather observer is also wrong, such as this one from Germany:
http://www.meteo.uni-koeln.de/meteo.php?show=En_We_Ue
If anything makes me skeptical about the skeptics it is the continual drum-beat claiming that all the measurements are wrong or that it’s all UHI, or the satellites are calibrated right, or the data has been manipulated in odd ways, etc.
Again, suppose the data is essentially correct, and globally speaking, 2010 turns out to be the warmest year on record. What scientific reason would AGW offer for this?
In my last post, this is the full German link I meant to give:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempjahrgross.gif
Tell me why this data is not to be believed? And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?
The above graph is absolutely false!. Everyone check own closest red spot and say if it is correct right here. This will be a kind of “fake red spots” investigation.
If single climate sampling stations are found, when the record is examined, to currently be ‘warmed’ by some mysterious statistical manipulation to ‘bring them into line’ with other stations a considerable distance away from them, what faith can lay people such as I have in the record as stated by the national and international organisations responsible for compiling the various charts of the earth’s warming or cooling. I have had experience of surprisingly different microclimates in a small geographical area that has little difference in altitudebetween sea level and 100 metres above mean sea level at high tide between each microclimate. The concept of an ‘average temperature’ in such an area may be statistically valid, but for all practical purposes is an absolute nonsense. Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?
The “hottest 6 months” is making the rounds in German news already. So it’s well orchestrated; most news from the English speaking part of the world takes 3 or more days to arrive here. This one was obviously blasted through the news agencies with a big “urgent” mark on it.
Considering that NOAA is an advocacy group (I’ll never forget Lubchenco’s schooling of Congress with her classic chalk in vinegar experiment), I’m not surprised by the data for the year-to-date on its site that spans from 1880 to 2010 (click for hi-rez image):
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats_sup.html
It’s also interesting to compare its June temperature departure map for the US with the degree-days map for Jan to June 2010:
http://uspest.org/wea/gis/NV_50us.png
Tom Rowan says : ‘If you are at home right now you can watch the British open live. No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record. Every last one of them is bundled up! It looks like November over there right now. Wool caps, hands in pockets, sweaters, wind breakers and winter coats!’
Actually, we (in GB) have had a couple of very good summer weeks – but this has now reverted to average or sub-average temps for the time of year. Of course, we had a very long, very white and totally wretched winter, followed by a very late and rather poor spring. Indeed, our spring and the pollen season (I get hay-fever alas) has been about three weeks late – despite our ultra-leftie British (Yes, it still uses that Obama-unfriendly term in its official name, despite most beeboids swooning at the mention of the great one!) Broadcasting Corporation keeping on telling us how our seasons are getting earlier and earlier!
Again, these storms are a frequent occurrence in the Northeast in the Winter (I grew up in NH and now live outside of DC). BUT, for Baltimore/Washington to actually get any snowfall from these storms requires…wait for it! – UNSEASONABLY COLD WEATHER! Just like we had last winter in December and February!
Now I ask you, how are these SNOW storms going to increase in frequency in the WARMING climate!?!? Sigh.
_____________
Did you miss our entire discussion on the cold weather this past winter when it was actually occurring? Are you aware that Greenland and other parts of the Arctic were seeing record warmth this past winter? You may want to do a bit of research about the Arctic Oscilation and the Arctic Dipole Anomaly to understand where all the really cold air came from last winter. There’s only so big of a cold air “reservoir” over the Arctic at any given time in the winter, and if it’s unseasonably cold somewhere in the south, then it also has to be unseasonably warm somewhere in the north– as it was this past winter.
I’ve noticed the same thing. NOAA anomaly maps are consistently 1-3 degrees too high along the Front Range.
Who gives a stuff what NOAA say, nobody believes a damn word they say, the T record is bent.
What if (statistically it is the ‘warmest’ ever in the history of the universe?) it don’t mean a damn thing in the northern hemisphere, Temperatures are off, get used to cold winters and never mind what the ‘experts’ tell you, three years ago the experts were telling us, how everything in the financial world was “hunky dory!”
Same difference, economics/climatology it is all in the end guess work because we do not understand the basic underlying drivers of climate temperatures and in the financial world the capabilities (incapability) of man’s stupidity and greed.
The oceans and the sun, their interaction on climate……….lets just concentrate on understanding them, man-made CO2 is a non sequitur.
Tom Rowan says: July 16, 2010 at 11:30 am
No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record.
I lived in UK for a while now, most of the time summer is pleasantly cool, none of the continental Europe’s deep-fry. I think it is the Arctic factor:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arctic-factor.htm
Psychiatrists would call it a projection from the subconscious of NOAA. 🙂
stevengoddard says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:53 am
I’ve noticed the same thing. NOAA anomaly maps are consistently 1-3 degrees too high along the Front Range.
____________
So if the error is consistent, and didn’t just start this year, then the warmth of 2010 must be correct because it is relative to the other years with the consistent error. And there is no NOAA involved in these independently taken temperatures from C. Europe that go back to 1761, and essentially match the same kind of global temperature rise that others are reporting:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempjahrgross.gif
These NOAA averages are an example of anti-synoptic reality garbage that State AGW proponents produce in order to fit the reality into their agenda.
R Gates writes:
“Did you miss our entire discussion on the cold weather this past winter when it was actually occurring? Are you aware that Greenland and other parts of the Arctic were seeing record warmth this past winter? You may want to do a bit of research about the Arctic Oscilation and the Arctic Dipole Anomaly to understand where all the really cold air came from last winter. There’s only so big of a cold air “reservoir” over the Arctic at any given time in the winter, and if it’s unseasonably cold somewhere in the south, then it also has to be unseasonably warm somewhere in the north– as it was this past winter.”
If only you had a clue about atmospheric circulation you’d avoid posting such rubbish.
I’ve lived in the DC, Baltimore area for over 60 years and rarely do lake effect storms reach the area. They dump in the Appalachian mountains long before they get here. Southeastern lows that often start over Texas are the ones that cause the brutal dumpings that we do get, like last winters. Because DC sits relatively near mountains, the Bay and the ocean, the freezing temperature line and the moisture available can vary quite a bit. Depends on the storm tracks. Sometimes we get dumpings east of the city or on the eastern shore of the Bay and other times the reverse. This year everybody got hit.
R. Gates – as an Atmospheric Scientist, I am well aware of what the AO, and more importantly for last winter here in the mid Atlantic, the NAO, are. So by your logic, it seems that you are supporting an argument that in the Global Warming world, the mid-Atlantic is apt to experience DJF temperatures 10 F below the 1971-2000 mean, in order to sustain more frequent snow storms? By that same logic, does that mean the above average temps in Greenland are not due to GHG and positive feedbacks – since it appears to be due to inter-annual oscillations, the drivers of which, we don’t understand?
Most importantly, why would these comments then seem to contradict the Global Climate Change Impacts on the U.S. key findings for the Northeast sector:
“The projected reduction in snow cover will adversely affect winter recreation and the industries that rely upon it.”
http://www.globalchange.gov/images/cir/region-pdf/NortheastFactSheet.pdf
So, in my ORIGINAL context, leaving alone temperatures in GREENLAND which was outside the scope of my comment, why do we have an NCDC climatologist CONTRADICTING the USGCRP findings? double-sigh
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:51 am
Did you miss our entire discussion on the cold weather this past winter when it was actually occurring? Are you aware that Greenland and other parts of the Arctic were seeing record warmth this past winter? You may want to do a bit of research about the Arctic Oscilation and the Arctic Dipole Anomaly to understand where all the really cold air came from last winter. There’s only so big of a cold air “reservoir” over the Arctic at any given time in the winter, and if it’s unseasonably cold somewhere in the south, then it also has to be unseasonably warm somewhere in the north– as it was this past winter.
……
Right. And if it’s warm somewhere in the north, it’s colder somewhere else. But that’s not what Lawrimore said in attempting to link the snow storms to overall warming. It seems you may agree that the assorted Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific oscillations appear to be the main drivers, not global warming.
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Alright, as a 25% skeptic (and 75% convinced that AGW is a real phenomenon), let’s suppose that the measurements (even with some errors) as correct, and that 2010 is indeed the warmest year on record, if even by a few tenths of a degree.
….
Why should I, or anyone familiar with the data, suppose these analyses are correct (or close within a fraction of a degree)? Neither NOAA, GISS, or CRU give all the details of how they derive these global means, and in any case, it’s a functional impossibility to calculate a complete globally integrated temperature from very incomplete coverage. This is especially true for years before satellite, meaning there’s no way we can know that 2005 was globally warmer than 1930.
The UK Met Office data for June 2010 put the temperature anomaly for the UK as a whole at +1.5 Celsius. Table here
.
So, regrettably, the “1C” spot from NOAA in the middle of the UK is about right.
So we’re back to trying to say that global temperature methods induces warming despite mosher having proven that they don’t. I know he left out the UHI effect and so on but as mentioned above this station is non-urban anyways. AMSU daily temperatures (near surface layer) are still running at the hottest on record for this month so i’m not so quick to insult NOAA. Bad week for WUWT. Mosher proves the methods don’t cause the warming, Dr. Meier shows that piomas is more accurate than pips and skeptical science ruins goddards previous antarctic pieces.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Part-Three-Response-to-Goddard.html
I’ve checked my own temperature anomaly for June 2010 with the average and I get about -0.6 Cesius. On the map above the dots closest to me shows that it should about -1.5 Cesius. It is well known that NOAA adjusts in ways to make the cold cooler and the warm warmer. In any case, my tomatoes are not growing well this year…. it’s darn too cold in the Northwest.
I have to join the protest on that quote. The Lake Effect description is totally wrong (I grew up in the northeast Ohio snowbelt), but “Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north,” cannot be let to pass without derisive comments.
I live in New Hampshire – I gladly sacrificed what could have been a decent snow season just so folks in the mid-Atlantic could experience a real winter (and to annoy my daughter in college south of DC). The vision of Air Force One landing in a snowy Washington marking President Obama’s triumphant return from Copenhagen warmed my soul better than any cup of hot chocolate.
And where did those storms come from? A jet stream tracking well south of average, that’s where! South, I tell you! Just look at Penacook NH at http://wermenh.com/sdd/index.html – just under 50 inches of snow! Two years ago the snow gods gave us the best cherry picking winter on record – 130 inches, 2,565 “Snow Depth Days.” And this Lawrimore completely disses my glorious sacrifice!
Whew, I feel better, thank you.
BTW, where’s Lawrimore’s quote? I couldn’t find here or on the other page (I’ll leave a note there). I found only two references in Google News, the better one includes comments from Joe D’Aleo (he and Joe Bastardi did a good job predicting mid-Atlantic snow) and Marc Morano. See http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/hottest-year-on-record/story-e6frfku0-1225892757018
I need to reply to RGates too, next comment from me.
LOL! Meanwhile, back in Realityville, the Brits are still shivering at St Andrews!
This is all about a global optimization of profits for the Elite:
Bringing Climate Change into Global Governance
Little can happen in this world without economic support. So it follows that little will happen in the climate realm until the international financial architecture is revamped to drive positive climate change responses, including increased energy efficiency and robust renewable energy programs.
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/579
Rgates at 11:37 a.m. said, inter alia,
“So where is the warmth coming from, if not from AGW caused in increases in GHG?”
This is EXACTLY what my BIG problem is with the concept of AGW. There is NO proof of its existence. So when a warming trend is observed, the “warmist” have to say “More proof of AGW!!!”. The closest “proof” that the “warmists” have of AGW is their forecasts based upon their theory. Unfortunately, none of those models produce forecasts which aren’t statistically close to reality.
So why is the default answer ” The warmth is coming from AGW caused in increases in GHG”?
Science requires those who hold the theory to provide proof that it can be used to accurately forecast an outcome. If it can’t be be used in such a manner, then the theory is WRONG. Therefore, the theory of AGW caused by small increases in a trace gas is just plain WRONG.
NOAA shows me in Sweden at -1C but Scandinavia is surrounded by a sea of red all the way to the arctic.
What gives?
Not for nothin’ but I think we broke 80F today and we are practically dying from this heat. The poor cat is spread eagle on the floor, paws pointing up under the celling fan. Glad I am not back home on the East Coast or in NYC this summer!
R. Gates: July 16, 2010 at 11:51 am
There’s only so big of a cold air “reservoir” over the Arctic at any given time in the winter, and if it’s unseasonably cold somewhere in the south, then it also has to be unseasonably warm somewhere in the north– as it was this past winter.
There’s no such thing as a “cold air ‘reservoir'” in the Arctic, the Antarctic, or anywhere else on the planet. Time to read up on atmospheric circulation — concentrate on the Northern Hemisphere for now.
Does it really matter what they “predict” or what they “announce”? Today’s high was supposed to be 96 degrees here yet at 1:30 p.m. the “official” temperature is 83. I seriously doubt that the temperature will increase by 13 degrees in the next couple of hours, especially since we have a 13-mph breeze blowing. (Maybe they can find several acres of fresh asphalt to help their prediction along.)
Call me skeptical if you want, but I’ve seen so many bogus temperature predictions in the past year or so where the actual high doesn’t even get close to the target temperature that I now believe they massage their predictions with a heated thermometer!
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:51 am
A lot of the mid-Atlantic weather, but not all, was due to the huge AO last winter. When it really got cranking, the jet stream came off the mid-Atlantic coast, turned north and later in the winter turned east into Canada.
Joe D’Aleo had forecasted a cold winter for New England, and that certainly verified through December. Later though that looping jet let warm air come down from Canada just in time to keep the coldest part of the year from being the coldest part of the year. With that daughter in college, I certainly appreciated the low heating bill.
The AO may well have been enhanced by the southerly push of the jet stream, but I don’t think it deserves much credit for that. Are you aware of how deeply south cold air went last winter? Florida saw a record manatee kill and further south was a major coral reef kill. If you want to balance Greenland and eastern Canada’s warmth, you might be better off looking there. Just expect questions about how the Arctic reached down to the coral!
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Alright, as a 25% skeptic (and 75% convinced that AGW is a real phenomenon), let’s suppose that the measurements (even with some errors) as correct, and that 2010 is indeed the warmest year on record, if even by a few tenths of a degree. To what would the skeptics attribute this warmth?
This point is worth a lot of attention. It is a sucker’s bet to take the position that the recovery from the Little Ice Age has ended. Too many of us have made that mistake.
The proper skeptic’s position is that the warming in the 70 years since WWII is not much different from the warming in the prior 70 years. What little acceleration has been observed can be chalked up to CO2 but it isn’t enough to warrant concern.
The rise in CO2 has been relentless and significant — and China is pretty much guaranteeing that it will continue. It’ll probably get a bit warmer too. Good.
In a few years, everyone will know that there was no dreaded “tipping point.” The earth will be slightly warmer. Deaths from cold weather will be down. Heating costs will be down. High latitude agriculture will be improved. The warmists will look like a preacher who predicts the world will end on a date certain. After that date, the prediction is tough to defend.
Unless we’ve taken the position that it’ll be cooler — then the warmists will claim they were right. Their apocalyptic prediction will be refuted, but can still be spin doctored.
Do we really want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like that?
Mr. Gates
Assuming the tempature data is correct is not paticulary wise in light of legimate qestions which have been raised about the quality of the Tempature date, and the reluctance of climate scientists to provide verifiable supporting detail. Personally I find placing god like reverence upon human produced information to be not sane.
As you well know one of the key prinicpals of science is the ability for others to reprodce you results and verify the accuracy of your studies. IN ALL CASES WHERE INFORMATION IS NOT VERIFIABLE THERE IS A SERIOUS RISK OF ERROR. Such a risk must be considred in ligth of the political motiviations and almost religious belief in CAWG held by the producers of such information.
You ask us to accepted the unreasonable proposal that the tempatrue records are prefect. Please note that the margin of error is so substantial to make the information upon which you seem to rely no more meaningful than noise.
Second you asked us to brush aside the fact that reported overall tempature change in the last 13 years is not statistically meaningful. And certainly not outside of natural variation. In fact, it is noteworthy how little varaition there has been in the recent past.
And finally you suggest that those with more open minds account for the source of a small change in average tempatures. It is if you do not believe that natural variation has anything to do with the climate.
However, if you were asking if man’s infulence could have had significant infulance in the very small change in global tempatures we have seen in the past few months most at this site would agree that it is certainly possible.
Climate science seems to lack the realization that thier credibility is dependent on their ability to provide verifiable science. When opinions and adjusted data are passed on as science that science becomes a joke.
Kevin G, thanks for the link
“Most importantly, why would these comments then seem to contradict the Global Climate Change Impacts on the U.S. key findings for the Northeast sector:
“The projected reduction in snow cover will adversely affect winter recreation and the industries that rely upon it.”
Also notice in this link:
http://www.globalchange.gov/images/cir/region-pdf/NortheastFactSheet.pdf
For the NE that had record snowfalls last year the same government link claimed:
“less winter precipitation falling
as snow and more as rain, reduced snowpack,”
I recall last winter when the NE had huge snowfalls same folks forgot this claim and then said it was consistent with their predictions for the North east because of global warming/climate change. What a bunch of phonies!!
R. Gates:
“If anything makes me skeptical about the skeptics it is the continual drum-beat claiming that all the measurements are wrong or that it’s all UHI, or the satellites are calibrated right, or the data has been manipulated in odd ways, etc. ”
This bit of paranoia concerning data should not be unexpected by any reasonable thinker after the egregious manipulations and hiding data and declines revealed by Climategate. Col. Sanders is still in charge of looking after our chickens. Only since Climategate, which came out under pressure from skeptics (there was no hacking, some disgusted insider put all this together and let it all hang out), has a growing number of cooling stories come out from the establishment and skeptics that are no longer blocked from the literature,…. polar bears aren’t in so much danger afterall,… Greenland has seen warmer periods than now …. CAGW press now “engaging” skeptics in civilized debate (why would they do that – invite a bunch of flat-earther deniers to debate with if there wasn’t a sea change and desire to soften the message instead of going down in the frost). Why are scientists not all skeptics now like they were in the golden age of scientific discovery (the consensus used to be a synod of medieval bishops).
Thze June anomaly map surprises me when I compare it to the July 4-11 chart from NASA. Where did all the heat go in July? On vacation?
http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/the-incredibly-rapidly-disappearing-heat/
It never ceases to amaze me what goes on at the NASA culinary institute for climatological arts and data cooking.
For Fayetteville NC the avg high was 92F for the month and the mean is 90.
In North Carolina it was cold in April and May and did not get up to the “average highs” until the second week of June. A monthly average of + 4C (7.2F) above normal just seems high for a ho hum June.
Remember NASA-GISS has already been caught “adjusting” data to meet the storyline before. This time with CAP & TRADE in the wings the pressure to produce the “correct” product must be even higher.
“The UK CRU version of Climategate centered around whether the 1990’s were warmer than any time in the past 1000 years. The US GISS version could be about whether 1998 was warmer than 1934!
It seems the temperature readings were adjusted six times after analysis in July 1999 indicated that the temperature anomaly for 1934 was nearly 60% higher than for 1998. See the above graphic for how GISS adjusted 1934 down and 1998 up until 1998 was warmer than 1934 (the January 2007 analysis) or at least virtually indistinguishable (the March and August 2007 analyses).
In the UK CRU case, the Medieval Warm Period vanished to present a “nice tidy story”. In the US GISS case, a nearly 60% temperature anomaly difference vanished to show that 1998 was as warm as 1934! Are these guys serious scientists or just skilled magicians?
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) can be a wonderful thing. According to WattsUpWithThat, a FOIA request by Judicial Watch has landed 215 pages of GISS emails related to errors in handling temperature data from 2000 to 2006 that overstated the temperature increase during that period.” http://tvpclub.blogspot.com/2010/01/us-version-of-climategate-coming.html
FOIA request by Judicial Watch: http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2010/783_NASA_docs.pdf
Gee this is as bad as the FOIA request about the USDA new HACCP regs. That FOIA turned up over 1,000 noncompliance reports from food inspectors that the USDA had ignored (and so did the Congressional investigation)
Time for some house cleaning in the US bureaucracies.
Re CET: – the Met Office has 2010 ytd below average:-
• Average so far this year
• Average CET to June: 7.50
• Normal CET to June: 7.74
• Anomaly to June: -0.24
• Provisional CET anomaly (up to 15th July): -0.11
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
Your Coal Creek Canyon graph is for 1983-2010. The mean is marked as being for 1971-2000. It is not. Bad graph. Disappointing on WUWT.
REPLY: Sorry, but you are in error there. The 1971-2000 is the BASE PERIOD, not the data period. The base period is used to calculate the anomaly. All graphs have a common base period of 1971-2000 but different data periods, including the one at the top from NOAA – Anthony
RockyRoad says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:38 pm
“. . . I’ve seen so many bogus temperature predictions in the past year or so where the actual high doesn’t even get close to the target temperature that I now believe they massage their predictions with a heated thermometer!”
I think this is where most have been for while now. Call it “climate shock” or whatever, but the wolf has cried far more than once too often for me take any of their prognostications or “hottest ever” announcements with anything other than a grain of salt.
Your numbers match up just fine with The National Weather Service climate report at: http://www.weather.gov/climate/getclimate.php?wfo=bou
Then if you pull up the previous months climate reports you find:
May – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 54.0 DPTR FM NORMAL: -3.2
April – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 47.8 DPTR FM NORMAL: 0.2
March – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 40.8 DPTR FM NORMAL: 1.3
February – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 29.1 DPTR FM NORMAL: -4.1
January – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 30.3 DPTR FM NORMAL: 1.1
2009
December – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 24.1 DPTR FM NORMAL: -6.2
November – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 42.6 DPTR FM NORMAL: 5.1
October – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 42.9 DPTR FM NORMAL: -8.1
September – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 63.4 DPTR FM NORMAL: 1.0
August – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 70.3 DPTR FM NORMAL: -1.4
July – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 70.3 DEPARTURE FROM NORMAL: -3.1
June – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 64.4 DPTR FM NORMAL: -3.2
May – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 59.0 DPTR FM NORMAL: 1.8
April – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 45.9 DPTR FM NORMAL: -1.7
March – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 41.8 DPTR FM NORMAL: 2.2
February – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 37.6 DPTR FM NORMAL: 4.6
January – AVERAGE MONTHLY: 34.9 DPTR FM NORMAL: 5.7
Only 3 months out of the last 18 have been over +4.0 deg above normal, so just how do you get an average that comes out that high?
In the first 6 months of 2009 the monthly departures from normal are:
+ 1.2 June
– 3.2 May
+ 0.2 April
+ 1.3 March
– 4.1 February
+ 1.1 January
Average of the 6 is -3.5/6 = -0.58
Looks to me like we are pretty much right on Normal or very slightly cooler (which fits the perception of everyone I know regarding the last 12 odd months. Last summer was cool and we have had several noticeably cooler than normal spells recently.
Or perhaps the left hand is not talking to the right hand and the folks that put out that chart have no clue that their own organization publishes monthly climate summaries that contradict their analysis.
Larry
Every once in a while I venture into pro-CAGW blogs to sample opinions and ideas aired there and I am always startled by the difference in tone in most from WUWT and other sceptical blogs. The nastiness and self-satisfied pseudo-cleverness, the invention of new and increasingly abusive terms for sceptics displays a side of human nature that is quite bleak and horrifying and makes ‘Lord of the Flies’ seem like the blueprint for their social evolution. I can never stay long there as I find the attitudes just too horribly depressing. Strangely enough, some of the regular posters on those sites visit WUWT and adopt a relatively civil and civilised attitude to discussion while they are here. I guess the difference is in the very civilised tone insisted on by sceptical Bloggers such as Anthony, Joanne Nova, The Bishop, Pielke Snr and many others.
I am grateful for that!
Correction:
In the first 6 months of 2009 the monthly departures from normal are:
+ 1.2 June
– 3.2 May
+ 0.2 April
+ 1.3 March
– 4.1 February
+ 1.1 January
Average of the 6 is -3.5/6 = -0.58
should read “first six months of 2010. the”
larry
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:41 am
“In my last post, this is the full German link I meant to give:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempjahrgross.gif
Tell me why this data is not to be believed? And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?”
Ok, let’s look here:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baur_infos.html
“Prof. Dr. Baur chose the stations in a way that they are distributed homogeneously over Central Europe. For each station, the anomalies from the long-term mean are calculated and averaged over the ensemble of stations. It arises from the use of such an extended observation period, that changes in instrumentation, in the location of the observation site, as well as in the observation interval cause inhomogeneities and trends in the data set. Therefore, Prof. Dr. Baur homogenized the time series. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that the accuracy of the data could decrease the further back in time you look in the diagrams. This could especially affect the temperature diagrams as the average only includes 4 stations here. The general trend should not be affected, though.
”
Baur used 4 stations on average. I didn’t care to read on where these stations were. Somebody else analysed a few more stations in Germany.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/germany-not-warming/
We’re not warming. We have a heat wave right now but we didn’t crack the record this year. So there. Acoordign to the AGW fairytale there should be more warming with more CO2, the record is from 2003 with 40.8 deg C, we reached 38.4 this year in Potsdam. We should be having new records each year, where is that? It’s not there. It doesn’t even correlate with rising CO2 level anymore, the conjecture has fallen on its face and needs resuscitation, a defibrillator and some serious adrenaline injections just to hobble on for another year.
Frederick Michael says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Unless we’ve taken the position that it’ll be cooler — then the warmists will claim they were right.
Actually, a lot of us have been expecting more warm before cooling – and an arctic ice extent, because of the recent el Nino, to be greater than 2007 but substantially less than 2009. The charts at DMI, however, for both arctic temperature and sea ice extent are starting to look a little scary, as if the air-conditioner for the Northern Hemisphere has gotten stuck at max-cool.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
That little down-tick in the temperature graph is unusual for the DMI record at this point in the melt season. If it actually goes through that blue line, it would be unprecedented. I’m watching with interest.
NOAA needed to get attention off their real problem. Huge scandals are being unearthed at NOAA, and about a week ago several congressmen called for the removal of NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, an Obama appointee. Obama stonewalled, told some of the lawmakers to back off. Lubchenco hired NOAA’s current chief counsel and under Lubchenco’s instruction, the counsel has stonewalled official inquiries into personnel and methods involved in millions of dollars of fraud and abuse, has refused FOI requests. Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick said he’s had no luck getting through to NOAA. NOAA has had problems for many years, but the point is now it is worse than ever because Obama has given it more power and it’s protecting people who should be brought up on criminal charges. Nothing it says can be believed.
I’m in the Seattle Area. Checking the weather underground, we ran just greater than 4 degrees below normal this June. (-121/30) ~2 degrees colder than shown on the map above, unless there is a tiny darker blue area I can’t clearly detect. I took the daily delta from average, and divided the sum of these by 30. On average, we were just greater than 4 degrees below normal.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KSEA/2010/6/4/MonthlyHistory.html#calendar
Kevin G
Richard Keen
Ric Werme
AllenC
Bill Tuttle
Frederick Michael
Paul A Peterson
Gary Pearse
Despite what R. Gates says, he is solidly in the CAGW camp as seen from his comments at other sites. He has also hung around WUWT long enough to have had his questions answered several times over. His actual agenda is to shepherd straying CAGW believers who may be wavering back into the fold and to cast doubts into the minds of anyone else he can.
Of Course he is great fun if you want to sharpen your teeth on a worthy opponent, and very useful in answering the questions that may be lurking in the back of the minds of those to shy to ask questions.
A report at Torrent Freak says the US government has shut down all 73,000 blogs hosted on WordPress. I notice that WUWT is still up and so is ClimateAudit. Does this mean the shutdown has just not reached these blogs yet? Or is this some kind of hoax?
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-authorities-shut-down-wordpress-host-with-73000-blogs-100716/#comment-683339
REPLY: I have a confirmation request pending with WordPress staff on this. – Anthony
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:41 am
“In my last post, this is the full German link I meant to give:”
Oh, now i did read on.
“The four temperature stations
De Bilt, Potsdam, Basel, Wien
”
He’s got 1 station for Germany, well 2 if you count Basel but that’s on the border to Switzerland. Hmmmm…. Now if you’re a believer in Hansen you’ll say that 1 station is perfectly reasonable for a country like Germany because you can always extrapolate the temperature out to 1200 km “because, hey, just work with anomalies and everything is hunky-dory”.
And maybe you are a believer in the Hansen principle but my opinion is that Hansen’s temperature products are the climatological equivalent of the Piltdown Man.
[snip – just a bit OTT]
“”R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:41 am
And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?”‘
It’s really very simple, the temperature goes up and down. Sometimes it’s an ice age, and sometimes it’s not.
Gates, you know the argument. If the science is settled, if they’ve proved their guess, they wouldn’t still be arguing with skeptics 20 years later and trying so hard to prove their guess.
I’m worse than skeptical, I don’t believe there’s a single person on the face of this planet that knows enough about our weather, short term or long term, to predict the future.
The proof of that, is that every time the weather changes, climate scientists back up, admit they mis-hind-casted the future again, and come out with some other completely new outlandish prediction of the future.
They can’t even figure out what just happened real time, and have no explanation for real time events.
My basic question to this point is this: does anybody believe CO2 causes drastic (or even measureable) increases in global temperatures? Looking at the ice cores, an increase in CO2 concentration trails temperature increases by ~800 years; it also lags temperature declines by 800 years. So are we all getting “hot and bothered” (pun intended) for something that is 800 years in the future (based on CO2 increases in the last 50 years or so)? Or are we hoping that the supposed impact projected out 800 years will coincide with the next Ice Age, thereby negating that truly bothersome climatic change?
Other than that preponderous eventuality, I’m not overly concerned and all this twaddle about red and blue dots is of interest but certainly doesn’t support any hypothesis the Warmers have been propounding. You’d have to wait ~800 years to see the results.
Or am I missing something?
What caused the Medieval Warm Period? See these peer reviewed papers on this climate anomaly.
Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
Someone called Professor Paul Jones at CRU agrees when asked this question by Roger Harrabin of the BBC. Do you agree with Jones? What caused the previous similar warm periods?
You see Gates the answer to your question might just be answered when you answer the questions I have asked you.
Alexander K says:
“The concept of an ‘average temperature’ in such an area may be statistically valid, but for all practical purposes is an absolute nonsense. Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?”
I think you are barking up the wrong tree of course. I’ll tell you a common sense way to think about the problem and maybe that will help.
Lets consider the decade of 1850. and also the decade of 1999-2009. here is what we know. We know that the average global temperature was either
1. exactly the same OR
2. it was warmer then OR
3. it was colder then.
Those are the three logical possibilities. Now, consider the evidence. Is there any evidence whatsoever that it was EXACTLY the same temp? no. That leaves us with
two possibilities. It was warmer or it was colder. Is that a 50/50 bet? or is it more likely that it is warmer now? Is there any evidence whatsoever that it was warmer in the 1850-1860 time period? Any evidence? Not to my knowledge. All of the evidence says that it is warmer now than it was then. All of the evidence. Note, that we are not answering the question of WHY, or the question of IF IT MATTERS, or the question of is the warming today UNPRECEDENTED. we are just asking the simple question, does the evidence all fall on the side of warmer now? Yes. You can look at several lines of evidence. You can look at temperatures from thermometers. True, they are not positioned perfectly. Nor are they present everywhere at all times. But on average they show a warming over time. Consider sea levels. The same story. the measuring system is not perfect, there are complicating factors, but the sea level evidence does NOT point to a cooling. It points to a warming. Glaciers. Yes, they are complicated. Yes there are many factors at play, but on balance that evidence does not point to cooling. It points to warming. Climate proxies of all manner and form. On balance they point to warming. Not cooling. Treeline movement, species migration. All point to warming not cooling. There is no credible case for cooling. None. All of which means we can say this: the world is warming since 1850 or so.
Again, I’m not addressing WHY. I’m not claiming that this warming is “unique” in human history. I’m not saying that it is dangerous. But its not cooling.
Given the utter lack of any evidence of cooling I would argue that we can be relatively certain that it is warming. The question is HOW MUCH.
is it about 1C since 1850 (+- something less than 1C)
is it about .5C (+- something less than .5C)
is it about .75C warmer?
we will never know how much exactly. But we can make estimates. So, should bad measurements at one station make you believe that it was WARMER in 1850 than today? No. Bad measurements at individual sites lessen the weight of the evidence. They dont reverse the sign of the evidence. how about a systematic warm BIAS? well, if they all were systematically BIASED warm and if the real truth was that today is colder, then we would we expect the sea level data to agree with BIASED temperature data? no. but…Maybe its all biased? Whats the chance of that? Are animals that change their migration as a result of warming in on the trick? In short, to believe that its cooling you have to believe the more improbable. So, it’s warming. We can be fairly certain of that, the only question is “whats the best estimate” and how accurate is that estimate. In any case our estimate plus error bars is is this: we are virtually certain that it is warmer today. That is not ‘absolute nonsense’ it’s a logical defensable rational unassailable position to hold.
yet, very few sceptics will even admit this. They will say things like this>
1. Its not warmer, the records are all garbage, but sunspots explain all this garbage.
2. Its not warmer today than 1850, but the MWP was warmer than today and we know this because people grew grapes.
3. Its not warmer, but if it were C02 would not be the cause of this thing that isnt happening.
4. Its not warmer, the records are garbage, but the warming we see is within “normal bounds” and we KNOW what normal bounds are because we believe in
ice core records which show that there is no corrleation between C02 and global temperature, which by the way doesnt exist anyway.
And a whole host of other logically incompatible positions.
To steer clear of being illogical its best to limit your beliefs. “It’s getting warmer” is a good start. You can say you dont know how much. you can say you dont know why. If you want to go beyond that bare belief, and engage in debates about WHY or HOW MUCH, then you are LOGICALLY committed to accepting some form of the record. For when it comes to proving your explanation of WHY, you can only make your case by appealing to the record.
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north.”
=============================================
It is often a forgotten fact of just how very, VERY difficult it is to get the atmosphere to snow in temperate, low altitude environments like the East Coast of the USA.
To get the deep-layer cold where it is not eroded away by prevailing higher-dewpoint Gulf of Mexico or even Atlantic air, so that snow crystals can form (and survive on their way down), is always a feat here.
It has nothing to so with storms “moving north”.
Stupid, dumb, uniformed, political quasi-scientific dogma….all at the taxpayer’s expense.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Ian E says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:51 am
Tom Rowan says : ‘If you are at home right now you can watch the British open live. No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record. Every last one of them is bundled up! It looks like November over there right now. Wool caps, hands in pockets, sweaters, wind breakers and winter coats!’
Actually, we (in GB) have had a couple of very good summer weeks – but this has now reverted to average or sub-average temps for the time of year. Of course, we had a very long, very white and totally wretched winter, followed by a very late and rather poor spring.
______________________________________________________________________
“No spring” would be closer; we went directly from a lousy winter to a few days of summer, followed by a quick relapse, then a few weeks of hot weather, when I changed into shorts and opened windows, and now cold again – back into long trousers and windows shut tight! The hot weather had the Beeb putting out silly health warnings, but it wasn’t much of a heat wave even by British standards. So far, this year has been one of the coldest in my experience, if not the very coldest. There was a harsher but shorter winter around ’79 (can’t remember exact year offhand, I’m going by where I was at the time).
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
“Alright, as a 25% skeptic (and 75% convinced that AGW is a real phenomenon), let’s suppose that the measurements (even with some errors) as correct, and that 2010 is indeed the warmest year on record, if even by a few tenths of a degree. To what would the skeptics attribute this warmth?”
=================================
To what would the “Believers” attribute the warmth of the MWP, or the Roman or the other ones down through history?
Oh, that’s right. They never happened.
Thanks, R, for always providing good fuel for our fire!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Robert says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:22 pm
So we’re back to trying to say that global temperature methods induces warming despite mosher having proven that they don’t….
_______________________________________________________________
Mosher proved that if you take a data set and manipulate it you get similar results. He did not prove the original data set was correct or had not been “adjusted” see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/20/darwin-zero-before-and-after/
There is a big stink going on in New Zealand because their data record have been fudged too.
Oh….I see Jimbo already jumped on that one!
Sorry….not trying to steal your thunder, Jimbo. Well said.
Chris
Norfolk, Va, USA
Steven Mosher says:
July 16, 2010 at 2:06 pm
And a whole host of other logically incompatible positions.
====================================================
Steven, you left out mine.
We don’t know squat.
Steven Mosher says:
July 16, 2010 at 2:06 pm
“[…]
yet, very few sceptics will even admit this. They will say things like this>
1. Its not warmer, the records are all garbage, but sunspots explain all this garbage.
2. Its not warmer today than 1850, but the MWP was warmer than today and we know this because people grew grapes.
3. Its not warmer, but if it were C02 would not be the cause of this thing that isnt happening.
4. Its not warmer, the records are garbage, but the warming we see is within “normal bounds” and we KNOW what normal bounds are because we believe in
ice core records which show that there is no corrleation between C02 and global temperature, which by the way doesnt exist anyway.
And a whole host of other logically incompatible positions.[…]”
When you say “logically incompatible positions” you seem to assume that these logically incompatible positions emanate from one and the same skeptic. Now, surprise, surprise, skeptics have different opinions and different expertise just like warmists – one might know what the inverse transformation of a logarithm is, the other might have difficulty spelling the word.
What you see as logically incompatible might be just two different opinions. For instance, my take on a global average temperature would be that it’s nice to know (though not terribly important) but GISS does a bad job at computing one. This might well be logically incompatible with the position of some Steve from L.A. but i don’t care.
Ron Cram says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:53 pm
“A report at Torrent Freak says the US government has shut down all 73,000 blogs hosted on WordPress. I notice that WUWT is still up and so is ClimateAudit.”
It’s one server hosting 73,000 blogs. Not the entire wordpress universe. Here’s another report, but it’s from Helium so i don’t know if it can be trusted:
http://www.helium.com/items/1893892-why-73000-wordpress-blogs-were-shut-down-by-the-us-government
If you take the so called 0.7c rise in temps because of global warming the earth now is actually very cold.
DirkH says: July 16, 2010 at 1:35 pm
We’re not warming. We have a heat wave right now but we didn’t crack the record this year. So there. Acoordign to the AGW fairytale there should be more warming with more CO2, the record is from 2003 with 40.8 deg C, we reached 38.4 this year in Potsdam. We should be having new records each year, where is that? It’s not there. It doesn’t even correlate with rising CO2 level anymore, the conjecture has fallen on its face and needs resuscitation, a defibrillator and some serious adrenaline injections just to hobble on for another year.
Dirk H, apart from your logic and your essential argument, which always seem convincing to me, I do enjoy your wicked sense of humour as shown in the above passage – this sort of stuff often makes my day! Thank you Dirk.
Doug
Bill Tuttle said:
“There’s no such thing as a “cold air ‘reservoir’” in the Arctic, the Antarctic, or anywhere else on the planet. Time to read up on atmospheric circulation — concentrate on the Northern Hemisphere for now.”
_____
Actually, if you have a very closed circulation pattern in the Arctic, (i.e. no cold outbreaks with cold air funneling south) you do get a “reservior” (this is a metaphor here people) of cold air in the winter. This past winter, when we get the kinds of high pressure systems forming over Greenland and N. Canada, we get meridonal winds that funnel that cold air from the Artic down further south. We had cold outbreaks in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, and this air was forced down south from high pressure and meridonal winds. A negative AO index in addition to the Dipole Anomaly can set up this situaiton and there is some thought that this might be the case more frequently in winters to come:
http://www.physorg.com/news195485722.html
Also the suggestion that the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s is a “minor” increase is absurd. It is a significant increase in a GH gas, and from a geological perspective, it has happened quite suddenly.
I find it interesting that the global temperature records are being challenged on such a broad front by skeptics when the temperatures are going up just as AGW models say they will, yet even those records untouched by NOAA, NASA, etc, parallal the same basic trends, such as this independent one from C. Europe:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempjahrgross.gif
I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW? What natural cyclical event is driving this? It can’t be El Nino only, as this past one was not as strong as 1998, and we are not where close to a solar max event. It seems the skeptics answer to the warmth of 2010 is “oh, the temperature data is wrong, the process is wrong, etc. etc.” and so the skeptics won’t even offer an alternative explanation to the warm year we’re having globally, but rather would like to deny the warmth, or give their local weather anecdotes.
Robert E. Phelan says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Actually, a lot of us have been expecting more warm before cooling – and an arctic ice extent, because of the recent el Nino, to be greater than 2007 but substantially less than 2009. The charts at DMI, however, for both arctic temperature and sea ice extent are starting to look a little scary, as if the air-conditioner for the Northern Hemisphere has gotten stuck at max-cool.
Yes, yes and yes. Of course, the skeptic community is far from monolithic and lots of people have made moderate predictions. I’m just trying to point out the wisdom of that. The Arctic Sea Ice Extent has held up quite well of late but this picture is discouraging.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_concentration_hires.png
The concentrations are too low. I had believed that this year’s minimum would be above 2009’s but now I think the melt is going to pick up big time later and put us in the range you predict. That’ll be good for shipping. At some point in the future, when we can count on trans-arctic traffic in September, lots of money and time will be saved by some shippers.
You should hear some of the US Navy briefings on how Arctic resources are expected to be a major priority for them. Good things are coming.
Gail Combs says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Despite what R. Gates says, he is solidly in the CAGW camp as seen from his comments at other sites.
____
You keep bringing this up, and it is so incredibly wrong so as to be both insulting (after months of saying this about me) and makes you look ignorant. I’ve have never posted any C atastrophic statements here on WUWT nor any other site. (despite some link you post here that shows someone using a name like mine to post nonsense on another site) The point of fact is, that while I’m pretty (75%) convinced that AGW is real, I’ve got no idea if it will be catastrophic, or turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the human race. Until I become 100% convinced that AGW is real, I’ve not focused on the ramifications. Furthermore, as the Arctic seems to be the first place that warming is projected to be (and seems to be) seen, it has been my main focus of interest.
[REPLY – Well, that is a pretty clear statement. We shall take it at face value and bear it in mind. ~ Evan]
Gail Combs,
Combining is not manipulating.
Gail Combs,
Also pointing to another WUWT article does not give something credibility. Goddard two weeks ago said that ice losses couldn’t occur in cold places in Antarctica. That is the quality of article (or lack there of) which makes me not so big on trusting many of the analysis’ on this site. Thankfully http://www.skepticalscience.com put some pieces on which refuted him.
R. Gates:
Guess I will pile on with everyone else.
Mainstream climate science has concluded that natural fluctuations (as we currently understand them) cannot explain the warming in the last 150 years and only CO2 forcing can. “What else can it be?”, they ask. With no answers forthcoming they declared the science settled.
However, given that we must surely be in the early stages of understanding long-term climate fluctuations and the possible role of GHG’s, CO2 can only be a maybe – not a certainty. Current state-of-the-art climate science can only suggest through modeling (using models that already assume CO2 to be the dominant driver) that human produced CO2 may possibly lead to climate catastrophe in the next century or two.
“Where is the warmth coming from?”, you ask.
Based on our current understanding, the only honest answer would be, “It could be a number of things, both natural and anthropogenic, including GHG’s. Some suspect the increase in atmosphereic CO2 has become the dominant driver, but until we understand the fundamentals of long-term climate change a lot better, we really can’t say for sure.”
When people ask me if the earth is warming I reply that I fear it isn’t – or, at least, not as much as would be better for humankind were it to do so.
R. Gates:
let’s suppose that the measurements (even with some errors) as correct, and that 2010 is indeed the warmest year on record, if even by a few tenths of a degree. To what would the skeptics attribute this warmth?
Depends on the skeptic. Doubt is subjective, depending on the experiences and reasoning of the individual mind.
When 2010 is over, if the data indicates a record level of warmth, it will be because of:
The contributions of every actual cause
– regardless of whether each cause is known or unknown
– regardless of whether each cause is believed or doubted
– regardless of whether each cause is relevant to the whole world or just the samples used in the record
The record warmth would also depend on the limit of the span of the record (it’s easier to beat a shorter span than a longer one).
And it will not be due to any cause that didn’t actually contribute to the samples
– even if such causes actually made a difference in the rest of the world
– even if me or you or any collection of people believe or doubt in that particular cause
@pgosselin says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Thze June anomaly map surprises me when I compare it to the July 4-11 chart from NASA. Where did all the heat go in July? On vacation?
http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/the-incredibly-rapidly-disappearing-heat/
It never ceases to amaze me what goes on at the NASA culinary institute for climatological arts and data cooking.
————————
The maps are using different reference points. The NASA July map: “This global map shows temperature anomalies for July 4–11, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008.” But the NOAA June map uses 1971-2000 as a reference.
For the benefit of the discussion, here are two of the storms that hit the central eastern seaboard last winter. The first is one of the Washington storms (I’ll have to dig for dates – the images were created to illustrate something else)
The motion of this storm was from sw–>ne. There is a line through the centre that demarcates the cold sector and its a diagonal just above Washington through Baltimore – north of that diagonal the precip is snow, wet, snow and sleet The purple areas are convective warm – mostly rain. The demarcation line isn’t a cold front strictly, its the lower reach of a mass of cold air sitting over the NE at the time. Notyhing to do with lake effect or “storms moving north”
The second image is another storm moving northeasterly through Kentucky and Tennessee. The yellow line marks the cold air boundary between the warmer south, and the southern reach of arctic air. You can see in the radar signature the smooth signature of snow above the yellow line, above the convective signature of rain (red areas below the yellow line. No lake effect here either, and once again, while the storm has a northerly drift, the snow is due to cold air masses not great lakes moisture.
@R. Gates says: July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends?
http://www.meteo.uni-koeln.de/meteo.php?show=En_We_Ue
This is a good question, my 25% sceptical friend. And, looking at Cologne here’s my humble opinion:
Couldn’t the same mechanism, that lifted the anomaly between 1885 and 1915 (30 yrs.) by 2.5°C, now move it upward by 1.5°C between 1955 and 2005 (50 yrs.).
Less increase in a longer period. They should have panicked in the early days.
I know, my answer is as less cientific as your question was, but you may think about it anyway.
Cherry-picked out of your source: http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempwintergross.gif
Arrgh – the image links didn’t come out – Mods if you can fix the links or change them to:
Washington, Winter
and Memphis, winter
REPLY: don’t try to make links, just put in URL’s amd WP will automatically make links from them http://www.google.com for example -Anthony
D Caldwell says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:22 pm
R. Gates:
Guess I will pile on with everyone else.
Mainstream climate science has concluded that natural fluctuations (as we currently understand them) cannot explain the warming in the last 150 years and only CO2 forcing can. “What else can it be?”, they ask. With no answers forthcoming they declared the science settled.
However, given that we must surely be in the early stages of understanding long-term climate fluctuations and the possible role of GHG’s, CO2 can only be a maybe – not a certainty. Current state-of-the-art climate science can only suggest through modeling (using models that already assume CO2 to be the dominant driver) that human produced CO2 may possibly lead to climate catastrophe in the next century or two.
“Where is the warmth coming from?”, you ask.
Based on our current understanding, the only honest answer would be, “It could be a number of things, both natural and anthropogenic, including GHG’s. Some suspect the increase in atmosphereic CO2 has become the dominant driver, but until we understand the fundamentals of long-term climate change a lot better, we really can’t say for sure.”
________________
I agree with most of this statement…hence why I am only 75% convinced that the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s is the most likely explanation for most of the warming of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
In general I do not deny the cyclical influences of the sun, the oceans, galactic cosmic rays, etc. I find especially interesting the studies being done on the length of solar cycles and how they influence temperatures during the following solar cycles. I am open to all these possibilities (my skeptical and true scientific nature insists!) but I find the evidence for the forcing caused by the 40% buildup in CO2 since the 1700’s to be very convincing. It doesn’t mean ALL the warmth has been caused by CO2, but a good part of it. Some of it could well be other cycles, but I see these as being lesser influencers than CO2.
What caused the heating of the MWP? Was it as warm globally as we are seeing now? There is conflicting evidence for both sides, and I think the data is inconclusive. We sure know that CO2 didn’t cause that warming, but is sure would be nice to have some solar data that from the period that can be trusted, especially the numbers of and strength of the magnetic fields of sunspots. But we don’t. I do find it suspicious that some skeptics look to the MWP as being the proof that CO2 is not causing today’s warming, when we know far less about the MWP then we do about the physics behind CO2 as a greenhouse gas and the increases we’ve seen in that gas since the 1700’s. Why put more stock in something less well known?
Enneagram said: “The above graph is absolutely false!. Everyone check own closest red spot and say if it is correct right here. This will be a kind of “fake red spots” investigation.”
Good idea. I live on the South Coast of NSW Australia. The map has us as hot in June, when in reality, it has been notably cold. Sydney, 200 km to the north, had its coldest June morning since 1949. Unusually cold weather engulfed the south-east of Australia and beyond, all presented as hot on the NOAA’s map:
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=4186
jaypan says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:43 pm
@R. Gates says: July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends?
http://www.meteo.uni-koeln.de/meteo.php?show=En_We_Ue
This is a good question, my 25% sceptical friend. And, looking at Cologne here’s my humble opinion:
Couldn’t the same mechanism, that lifted the anomaly between 1885 and 1915 (30 yrs.) by 2.5°C, now move it upward by 1.5°C between 1955 and 2005 (50 yrs.).
Less increase in a longer period. They should have panicked in the early days.
__________
Yes, it could be many “mechanisms”, like some cycle that we haven’t discovered yet, some influence from the sun that we don’t know about yet, etc. It is this possibility that keeps me 25% skeptical! Right now though, IMO, the 40% rise in CO2 since the 1700’s seems like the best one out there, though others fall into the category of being worth looking at, and some are simply not.
R. Gates says:
“I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW? What natural cyclical event is driving this? It can’t be El Nino only, as this past one was not as strong as 1998, and we are not where close to a solar max event. It seems the skeptics answer to the warmth of 2010 is “oh, the temperature data is wrong, the process is wrong, etc. etc.” and so the skeptics won’t even offer an alternative explanation to the warm year we’re having globally, but rather would like to deny the warmth, or give their local weather anecdotes.”
First of all, let me say, I far prefer the satellite temperature data to any of the ground based data. What Zeke & Mosher showed is that slightly different methods of manipulating bad ground based data gives you a similar result…not necessarily a correct result. I happen to think for many reasons that the satellite data is more accurate. You can find the latest chart thru June here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
This data shows the current temperature anomaly of +0.436 deg C. NOT the 0.68 deg C as reported by NOAA. The year 2010, according to this data is NOT warmer than 1998.
I agree with you that the warmth this year is NOT due entirely due to El Nino but is a residual warmth from the warm phase of the PDO, which NOAA has now declared has recently flipped to cold, and a very warm AMO. Since the PDO has become colder, you will notice that this latest strong El Nino was NOT as strong as the one in 1998.
The general increase shown in the satellite temperature graph is likely due to the fact that just as the satellite record began the PDO became warm and the AMO has become increasingly warm since 1980 and has just reached record high values. In another decade or so, the AMO will revert back to a cold phase. This coupled with a still cold PDO at that time will result in much cooler global temperatures than now.
Joe Bastardi, the best seasonal and long range forecaster I have ever come across in my 40 year professional career as a meteorologist, has stated and I agree, that by the end of this year, the satellite record will show global temperatures back near the average and possibly a few tenths of a degree lower than that by early next year. There will be a similar drop to the one that occurred after the 1998 El NIno. Once the AMO goes negative, he believes, and again I agree, we will see temperatures similar to the 1970s. He has even stated he is more sure of this forecast than of any other long range forecast he has ever made.
So there you have it in a nutshell what the natural causes are for the warming we see, plus I wouldn’t rule out a contribution from a recovery from the Little Ice Age and as Dr. Spencer has claimed, all of the warming can be explained by just a 2% decrease in global cloud cover, which unfortunately we cannot adequately measure YET.
You also now have a forecast of what will happen over the next decade based upon the factors mentioned above. Let’s see how this forecast turns out against the GCMs.
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Why put more stock in something less well known?
==============================================
Because to put stock in the things you claim are better knowns, requires that you put stock in many times more things that are even less known.
Believing in AGW requires that you put stock in so many un-knowns it’s off the chart.
R Gates writes:
“Tell me why this data is not to be believed? And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?”
The data that you cite is incorrect for my location. That is one count against the data. The UHI effect should increase annually for the simple reason that measurement stations are located in cities and American cities constantly increase the density of their power generating units and cause higher local temperatures and longer lingering high temperatures. This is certainly true at my location. That is a count against AGW as an explanation. What more do you need?
Isn’t the summation of the IPCC report a statement that pretty much says “We can find no other means to account for the recent warming, therefor it must be due to CO2.”?
Have we had a scientifically repeatable experiment which puts forth this hypothesis and then proves it?
And my favorite question, which I first read on WUWT is Let’s suppose mankind CAN impact temerature on a global level…what does it get set to, and who gets to decide that?
JimB
R Gates
Unless you are suddenly going all religious on us and suggesting that man can only exist in a soup of absolutely precise amounts of gases, we need to look at when Co2 can reasonably have started to make an impact. This is surely after 1950 (and doesn’t take into account the life of a CO2 molecule.)
What I find interesting is that-with fits and starts-temperatures have been increasing since our earliest instrumental records.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi
So what I want to know is why have temperatures been increasing for at least 350 years, and why do we place such great store on James Hansen’s figures, who merely showed the continuation of that increase from 1880 with Giss.
Tonyb
R. Gates,
“I do find it suspicious that some skeptics look to the MWP as being the proof that CO2 is not causing today’s warming, when we know far less about the MWP then we do about the physics behind CO2 as a greenhouse gas and the increases we’ve seen in that gas since the 1700′s. Why put more stock in something less well known?”
The uncertainty about the temperature of the MWP is not ” proof that CO2 is not causing today’s warming”, but rather a basis for skepticism of claims that the current warming is alarmingly unnatural. The “physics behind CO2” only explains less than a third of the recent warming and an expectation of about 1 degree C over the next century. Anything more requires significant net positive feedbacks. So I don’t think we are putting “more stock in something less well known”.
On an evidence basis, I don’t know how you justify being “75% convinced that the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700′s is the most likely explanation for most of the warming.” The 1700s included the little ice age, the last 60 years of the 20th century were a solar grand maximum, the multidecadal oscillations were simultaneously in their negative phases during the midcentury cooling and in their positive phases during the warming of the 80s and 90s. With uncertainties in our understanding of aerosols, the solar coupling to the climate, the state of the oceans, could feedbacks, etc. A little more skepticism would seem to be in order. What evidence gives you any confidence that CO2’s role is “most” instead of say 30% of the recent warming? Keep in mind that even “most” is not that alarming, if say 51% counts. If you don’t really mean a higher percentage, then you should be with the skeptics in recommending waiting for further science before taking any arguably uneconomic action. Economically justified energy conservation and efficiency measures should be taken of course. regards.
Steven Mosher says:
July 16, 2010 at 2:06 pm
“…you can only make your case by appealing to the record.”
I agree with that completely. Let’s look briefly at that record. In the 1850’s there were precious few stations–all in cities, mostly in the Western world–making temperature measurements. Nothing to base any reasonable estimate of “global temperature upon. Those cities had no asphalt streets, no motor vehicles, no electrical generating stations, etc.
At present we are entering the fourth decade of truly global satellite measurements. Knowing from the longest available station records that there are strong, persistent multidecadal and centennial-scale oscillations of unknown cause, the satellite record is far too short to base any reasonable estimate of secular trend upon. And that’s precisely why NO ONE can say whether on a GLOBAL basis the present decade is warmer or cooler than any in the nineteenth century. Unless, of course you want to close your eyes to the fact that virtually all the cities have grown and now have asphalt, motor cars, electric power etc. and wish to attribute the evident rise in URBAN temperatures to the potent magic of CO2.
“What caused the heating of the MWP? Was it as warm globally as we are seeing now? There is conflicting evidence for both sides, and I think the data is inconclusive.”
Can you please provide the peer reviewed published papers that show “conflicting evidence for both sides” (just the AGW evidence will suffice but you can show the other side if you like).
I dont get it, some graphs show the high arctic at cooler than normal and others show it as warmer. Well which is it? Can we at least agree on what its doing up there or find out who is blowing smoke?
Robert writes:
“So we’re back to trying to say that global temperature methods induces warming despite mosher having proven that they don’t. I know he left out the UHI effect and so on but as mentioned above this station is non-urban anyways.”
If you want us to take you seriously, you must learn not to contradict yourself, undermine the credibility of the theorist you cite, and undermine your own credibility in your first two sentences. You must not say that Mosher proved it and that Mosher left out the UHI effect. The statements contradict one another. You must not cite an author as an authority, Mosher, and in the same breath reveal that his argument left out essential concerns, UHI. That undermines the author. The rest is obvious.
Cutting to the chase, if AGW scientists must deny what everyone who has some mature experience of cities knows, that there is a major UHI effect, then they must undertake some serious studies to prove their point. As I read the literature, at this time the AGW position on UHI depends entirely on Phil Jones’ two papers about a Chinese city, one from 1990 and one from the last few years. The 1990 paper held that the UHI effect was insignificant and the recent paper held that the UHI effect could explain up to 40% of warming in that city. This is the state of your science and you expect us to take you seriously on UHI?
Finally, please understand that some parts of the world grow constantly and that most of the growth is in the cities, where the measurement stations are. The United States grows constantly. The density of heat generating devices in cities in the USA grows constantly. That must explain some of the increase in annual temperature measurements in the USA. If AGW scientists are serious then they will undertake a major study of UHI in American cities and they will permit sceptics to contribute to the design of that study.
@R. Gates says: July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends?
My question is what warmth are we talking about? In New Zealand the raw data has been modified to produce a ‘warming trend’. This was modified by Dr. Jim Salinger (who was trained for a period at the University of East Anglia) and is an acolyte of Phil Jones. He also features in the Climate Gate emails. As I understand it, the raw data in N.Z. shows no warming, only Jim Salinger’s manipulated data shows this. Jim Salinger is also a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change third and fourth assessment reports, which have made major assessments of climate change.
It all looks so cosy to me.
If you look at all the other apparent ‘manipulations (as shown in Willis Eisenbach’s article re Darwin for example) one has to question the veracity of the data underpinning the warming trend. Can anyone really put any faith at all in this, especially when the urban heat island effect has not been properly dealt with. Even if there has been a rise in temperature of a degree or so over a century there is no evidence that it has been caused by man induced co2 or even naturally produced co2.
Then to get CAGW one has to jump to positive feedback for which there is no evidence at all from what I can discover.
Amazingly, it is upon this argument that governments of the world are being exhorted to destroy their economies. Therein lies madness. If there was ANY real evidence of this, governments would not be shilly shallying around. They would put every effort into reversing it immediately.
One thing is certain. Economic catastrophe will occur without doubt if we pursue this madness.
Doug
R Gates said:
“And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?”
“Alright, as a 25% skeptic…”
Climate changes are likely caused by a combination of myriad factors in this multi-cyclical, chaotic system. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to present a nice tidy story, but unfortunately the unknowns are many – and that’s just the known unknowns, as they say! It is simply not good enough to imply that since we can’t fully explain changes in climate by any other means, it therefore follows that it must be CO2/AGW. That’s a weak, weak non-argument.
And there is no such thing as being “25% sceptic.” That’s like saying you’re 25% alive, or 25% genius. In science, scepticism is not relative – the word is not applied like in colloquial situations (e.g. “I’m a bit sceptical about that!”). You can’t be “a bit” or “25%” sceptical in science. You either apply sound sceptical principles, period (in which case you are a sceptic) or you don’t – in which case you are a faithful believer.
To be a sceptic does not mean “to deny a thing’s existence” or “to disbelieve” – indeed, science is not even a matter of “belief.” Rather, to be a sceptic means to apply rigorous testing of a theory by replicating an experiment in an attempt to make it fail. (To be more accurate, one does not really “make it fail” – one merely reveals where the theory always failed to begin with). This even applies to theories based on data in which, say, the owner has 25 years or more work invested. Anyhoo; once fault has been found (and it usually is), the theory is then essentially dead. Then it’s back to the drawing board again. In this way, only the strongest theories survive to become accepted as “laws.”
The faithful, on the other hand, have their models, programmed and adjusted and tweaked to add pseudo-credibility to flawed theories. The faithful have absolutely no interest or motive in testing a theory to make it fail; after all, a Christian does not test God.
Still “25% sceptic,” Mr Gates?
Steven Mosher writes:
“If you want to go beyond that bare belief, and engage in debates about WHY or HOW MUCH, then you are LOGICALLY committed to accepting some form of the record.”
Nope, sorry, and the reason is that your present method of collecting data is demonstrably worthless. Yet you are unaware that it is worthless.
Let me start with the second point, that you are not aware that your data is worthless. Do you know the seasonal variations in weather activity in central Florida? Of course you don’t. So, you are not aware that our normal summer pattern is gorgeous sunshine until the 3-5 pm mark when the daily thunderstorm rolls in. Been going on as long as I have been alive. At 3 pm, the normal temperature is in the 95-100 range. After the storm rolls through, the temperature is in the 80-85 range. We get a mid-day temperature change of twenty degrees almost daily. You were not aware, right?
You will say that this does not matter because the temperature readings are taken at the same time every day, that changes in the readings over the years are all that matter, and that local weather is random and has no effect on the readings over the years. Notice that the last clause is false. This weather pattern is not random. Suppose a temperature reading is taken daily at 3 pm. You might get a 100 degree reading there for years and find it followed by an 80 degree reading for years. If the environment is warming, for whatever reason, that warming influences the time that the storm arrives and the temperature reading. There is feedback. Do you take these matters into account in your temperature readings? of course you don’t. Suppose the change that I described occurred, what would you do? You would normalize it, of course. In normalizing the readings, you substitute your judgement for actual data.
The UHI effect creates similar problems. American cities increase the density of their energy using devices daily. The result is that American cities stay warmer longer at night. This is not a random phenomenon. It accelerates at various rates all the time. Temperature measurement stations located in American cities are worthless as a means of recording temperatures for your work. Yet most stations are in American cities or at airports, which experience the same problem. Until the proponents of AGW undertake serious studies and introduce an entirely new regime of measurement stations, your work will have its foundation in the moving sands.
Thanks Dr. Keen, just knowing that you understand the truth lets me know there are many others like you out there, just wish more would come forward with the proper science as you have done above. It just adds so much to the credence to other laymen out here or scientists outside this specialty who know it to be the truth too. It’s amazing how few proper words are needed to set it right. This is a war of words and thoughts, some are devious, though maybe not meant so, and some are just scientifically correct. it’s sad to see NOAA and NASA on the devious side of so many topics of late.
The same explanation we give for the similar warming that occurred in the MWP, the Roman, Optimum, etc.: internally generated (chaotic) fluctuations in the setting of the earth’s thermostat, i.e., its cloud cover. Here are relevant quotes from Roy Spencer’s recent book, The Great Global Warming Blunder
@R. Gates says: July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends?
_______________________________
It’s a figment in the data manipulations and you are eating it my alarmist friend.
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:41 am
And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?
Witches. There’s a historic precendent for it. In case of bad weather – blame witches.
Of course there is an underlying human side to it. The simple fact is that we don’t know how a lot of things, and climate and weather are part of that whole area we don’t know. However, for people to say “I don’t know.” leads to the reaction the Steve McIntyre got in the recent debate when he said “I don’t know.”
Given the fact that we don’t know, what are we going to do about it? Simple – create a scapegoat. There’s two ways of creating scapegoats, the first being make something new. Don’t know how heat works? Create Phlogiston. Don’t know how light transmits across a vacuum? Create Aether. Don’t know how people fall ill and die? Create Miasma.
The other way of creating a scapegoat, is to take something and give it superpowers. The weather not to your liking? Well there’s some old women, who can change shape, fly and kill at a distance who are to blame – we call them Witches. Alternatively, there’s a gas which can violate the laws of thermodynamics, make planets emit more than a theoretical black body, and can turn heat into cold – we call it Carbon Dioxide.
The whole AGW thing just proves that we humans are no more mature at handling uncertainty and our own ignorance, than we were during the Dark Ages.
Alexander K says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:44 am
The concept of an ‘average temperature’ in such an area may be statistically valid, but for all practical purposes is an absolute nonsense. Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?
It’s not statisically valid either. It is arithmetically valid, in the same way that an average phone number is computable.
Let’s take an example: I have a bath, it holds 1 ton of water. Its sitting there boiling merrily at 100C. I drop another ton of the old H20 in at 0C – what’s is the average temperature of the 2 tons of water?
If you said 50C, you’d be wrong – did I not mention the second lot of H2O was solid? Latent heat of fusion has just killed your average. Do sattellites scan the oceans, looking for how much floating ice there is and back calculating heat element in joules? No? Oops…
Another example, with emissivity: You have a black body radiator, you know it’s average temperature – therefore you know how much it’s emitting – right? Well, take half of that black body, and cool it to 0K and double the hot site to twice it’s temperature to compensate. Stefan Bolzman’s T^4 states that the emissivity of the hot side is now 16 times greater than what it was. Of course, it’s only half the area, but the upshot is – same average temperature, 8 times the emmissions. Oops…
I could give an example with specific heat capacities, but I think you get the idea. In short, if you average temperature, you break the laws of thermodynamics. If you break the laws of thermodynamics – you’re wrong.
You can average heat (energy), but not temperature – and they’re not the same.
Bill Steffen had an interesting comment about the rarity of 100 degree heat in the mid-west compared to early in the 20th century do to change in land use.
http://blogs.woodtv.com/2010/07/06/heat-continues/
Actually more intense land use growing corn with irrigation.
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north,”
Dumbest thing I’ve read so far. This guy actually has a meteorology degree???? From *where*”?!?!?
The general science is pretty simple: if the globe is warming, and will continue to warm (it doesn’t matter what the cause is), the polar source regions will warm; the polar front jet (both Northern and Southern branches) will migrate northward; the Hadely Cell will dominate the mid-latitudes; and the storm tracks will also drive northward.
There are several mechansims for significant snowfall along the Eastern Seaboard. One of these being of Appalachians. The Appalachians act as a dam for very cold unmodified polar and artic air. The mountains keep the air funneled down the East Coast. However, in a warming enviorment, not only will the jet stream remain over Canada, but so will it coldest air. If a cyclone does develope and travel along the East Coast, there will be relatively warming advecting in behind (as compared to cooler regimes). The end result will be more than likely rain -everywhere.
Also, the Southern Branch of the polar jet will more than likely be north of its normal track. Droughts will result everywhere.
RGates
I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW?
=============================
Don’t expect a “satisfactory” answer to a ridiculous question.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
R. Gates,
“I do find it suspicious that some skeptics look to the MWP as being the proof that CO2 is not causing today’s warming, when we know far less about the MWP then we do about the physics behind CO2 as a greenhouse gas and the increases we’ve seen in that gas since the 1700′s.”
===============================
And I do find suspicious….pretty much everything you say as of late…
Who the heck has said that the MWP is “proof”….one way or the other?
It just is what it is….that’s it.
Don’t try and shift the argument.
A professor once told me: “A little knowledge….in the mind of someone who thinks they know more than they actually do…is a dangerous thing.”
Bingo. You would do better to listen and learn from the actual scientists and experts on here [of which one I readily admit I am not], rather than constantly challenging with your agenda-driven, deductive style of “debate.”
That, my friend, is as transparent, as CO2 gas.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Z says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:09 pm
===========================
Eloquently said!
1971 to 2000 base period.
Too bad they weren’t fair about it. 1990 to 2000 would have been more fair.
R. Gates says:
“I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW?
So warm R Gates? But what is so warm? It seems to me that this is much ado about nothing. Over the eons temperatures have risen and fallen to higher and lower levels than we are witnessing now over say the last 100 years. You seem to want to attribute this latest to set of variations to human influence. It seems to me that the burden of proof lies with you rather than with the likes of me. I don’t need to prove anything or offer any explanation of what appears to me to be a perfectly acceptable climate.
For my part, I see nothing exceptionally warm about it. For example, we have recorded the coldest temperatures where I live since 1947 and the coldest a little further away since 1871. Our summer wasn’t very warm either– in fact rather dismally cool. So much then for the warmest year on record that you like to quote.
Doug
Joseph D’Aleo on NOAA, “……they keep finding more warmth.”
Joseph D’Aleo. it’s ‘manmade’ global warming. but not how you’re thinking:
Joseph D’Aleo on dropped temperature stations and missing data:
Theo Goodwin says:
July 16, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Steven Mosher writes:
“If you want to go beyond that bare belief, and engage in debates about WHY or HOW MUCH, then you are LOGICALLY committed to accepting some form of the record.”
Nope, sorry, and the reason is that your present method of collecting data is demonstrably worthless. Yet you are unaware that it is worthless.
Let me start with the second point, that you are not aware that your data is worthless. Do you know the seasonal variations in weather activity in central Florida? Of course you don’t. So, you are not aware that our normal summer pattern is gorgeous sunshine until the 3-5 pm mark when the daily thunderstorm rolls in. Been going on as long as I have been alive. At 3 pm, the normal temperature is in the 95-100 range. After the storm rolls through, the temperature is in the 80-85 range. We get a mid-day temperature change of twenty degrees almost daily. You were not aware, right?…..
_____________________________________________________
I would like to add that that pattern – a daily afternoon thunderstorm is also typical of South Carolina, with the resulting temperature drop. However in North Carolina you get a different pattern. North Carolina gets more of a “measles” pattern of small intense thunderstorms in the afternoon. Therefore you can get major temperature differences for the afternoon highs in adjacent cities. As Dr Spencer pointed out a change in cloud cover (storms) can have a major impact on the global temperature.
I just did a quicky look at some southern east coast US cities for July 2008 & 2009 and found a rather interesting pattern. The more southern city (St Augustine FL) had rain on about 23 out of thirty one days. Columbia SC , Lumberton NC, and Fayetteville NC had rain 20 out of 31 days while Sanford NC and Rocky Mount NC had rain only 10 days out of 31. The pattern was a lot more consistent than I would have expected. Also the demarkation between expected thunderstorm vs occasional thunderstorms was a lot sharper than I expected. Sanford and Fayetteville are only thirty miles apart.
I wonder if the pattern would be sensitive enough to pick up the changes in cloud cover and therefore climate changes? I wonder if the “demarkation” is topographical or if it shifts over time as the climate shifts? Might be interesting to look at if I could get my hands on the data. Unfortunately Wunderground purged most of their back data about a year ago. Hopefully Dr Spencer or someone has the global satellite cloud cover data and has looked at it or is looking at it.
Also of note is Sanford is the snow line. North of Sanford you normally get some snow each winter. South of Sanford you usually get no snow. Sanford, in the last 15 years has gotten snow about three times.
Discussing scientific matters is a healthy exercise.
Based on what R.Gates is saying, there are two possible explanations for the current warming:
(1) The AGW explanation.
(2) The planet is at a peak, or approaching the peak, of a natural temperature cycle and will at some stage start to cool back to something like the 20th century norms.
Supernatural or flippant explanations (like witches) are not scientific. Nor it is legitimate to argue that ALL land, surface and satellite observations are fake. The planet is currently warming, and that is fact.
So how long does a scientifically-minded person persist with a belief if the empirical data continually shows the opposite? I would be delighted if the planet temperature started to decline smoothly back to 1960s levels. I would not mind being called a gullible fool. It would be a monkey off the mine and the world’s back.
But suppose the reverse happens. The sun is moving back towards a maximum. Suppose record temperature anomalies continue to be set in 2011, 2012, 2013, all the time with new and accurate satellite records of sea and land ice declines, sea level rise, 100-year droughts and floods etc. How long does a sceptic retain his doubts until he stops being 100% sceptical and starts to believe in something?
Scepticism and doubt are good because they push science to be more and more sure. But scepticism is not a forever condition. Science is a powerful tool because scientists are often wrong. There must be a tipping point even to the point of: “Well, while retaining scepticism, I accept that action must be taken on these data, if only on precautionary grounds”. Remember, even Doubting Thomas had a bottom line. What is yours?
HOTTEST JUNE WAS IN 1846 then 1676 and finally 1976
Jun temperature in England have not changed much if anything for the last 350 years.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
RockyRoad says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Does it really matter what they “predict” or what they “announce”? Today’s high was supposed to be 96 degrees here yet at 1:30 p.m. the “official” temperature is 83. I seriously doubt that the temperature will increase by 13 degrees in the next couple of hours, especially since we have a 13-mph breeze blowing. (Maybe they can find several acres of fresh asphalt to help their prediction along.) Call me skeptical if you want, but I’ve seen so many bogus temperature predictions in the past year or so where the actual high doesn’t even get close to the target temperature that I now believe they massage their predictions with a heated thermometer!”
Same thing has been happening here the last 2 weeks. For example, yesterday we were supposed to go to 91, and at noon it was 77. The high topped out at 83, which is average. And as warm as it was last week, we still didn’t come anywhere close to breaking records.
The same thing applies to last winter. Quite frankly, the forecasts suck. I wish I could be wrong that often and not get fired. We were paralyzed by that February storm because the planning committees at the public works department listened to the forecast. The Weather Channel predicted no more than 12 inches, which is a piece of cake to deal with, and the NWS predicted even less. We ended up with 25 inches of snow and they simply weren’t prepared for that.
R. Gates you are not 25% sceptic and 75% AGW. You are 25% optimist and 75% pessimist. You are just more receptive to negative messages. This is also why AGW does not take off with the public at large. The market is only as big as the pessimists. Maybe a worthwhile read for you and all the tipping point people is this. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-ridley/down-with-doom-how-the-wo_b_630792.html
toby, there is a significant difference between “fake” and – “inadequate” – “biased” – “inaccurate” and so on. It’s worth pointing out that recognising the limits of one’s instruments is not the same thing as believing they are somehow evil.
What is my bottom line? It’s not scientific, but it is analytical. I will give consideration to the reality of AGW when the political cadres who support it begin acting as though it is real.
This would mean an end to tree plantations as offsets, since plain arithmetic reveals this source of CO2 sequestration is both finite and inadequate. Besides, as agriculture becomes more marginal, more land will be needed for food, not less.
It would mean an end to conspicuous consumption by any and all proponents of the theory.
It would mean a serious and sudden interest in replacing our base-load electricity generation with dependable base-load generation from nuclear and hydroelectric plants rather than corporate greenwashing with net-energy-loss technologies like solar.
At that point I will reconsider my disbelief. But your basic premise is wrong. Scepticism is a “forever” condition. It’s a mental discipline that is always useful. Even when convinced, it is worthwhile understanding why and how someone else might remain unconvinced. It is worthwhile to remember that you, and those you trust, might be wrong. And in that context, one might reconsider the moral wisdom of bending the whole world to the yoke of one’s ideology.
Civil Servents tend to take their que from the Political Appointee in charge of their shop, office, agency, department. It’s a form of self protection. If you want to get along and move along, ya gotta’ go along. NOAA –and every other government office– toes that line, toats that bail, and says Yes, Sir or Ma’am, every minute of every day. It’s a lot like the Academic environment. And every other form of human endeavour.
PS: I keep getting the impression that R.Gates isn’t listening (and hasn’t been for some time). His pleas for help in understanding this or that seem to be more a ploy to shift or hyjack the discussion.
If R. Gates really is 25% sceptic, he should be congratulated on progressing intellectually. At this rate he will be at 100% by 2013 (but then so will practically everybody else).
Now, if he could make his contributions a bit (well, a lot) shorter, I might also take the time to read them.
toby asks: So how long does a scientifically-minded person persist with a belief if the empirical data continually shows the opposite?
The funny thing is, that is the exact question skeptics/climate realists have been asking of the CAGW/CC Believers all along. The empirical data show that C02 is simply not a problem, and in fact is beneficial. But Alarmists don’t want to see it, or hear it, or allow anyone else to, and in fact simply want anyone who claims otherwise to shut up. That is why they claim an “overwhelming scientific consensus”, and have tried to keep skeptic papers or views from being published, why skeptics have been sidelined, and shut out, and why the rallying cry has been “the debate is over!” The actual science simply isn’t on their side, and on some level they know it.
The planet is currently warming, and that is fact.
Actually, your statement of “fact” is completely meaningless without context. Yes, there has been some warming since the LIA. That is to be expected, and within the range of natural variation (a phrase some Warmists seem to dislike intensely). Plus, the actual extent of warming is also highly in question, due to UHI, station drop-out and incorrect placement, etc.
But scepticism is not a forever condition.
Correct. Nor, one would hope, is Alarmism a forever condition The more you read about it, though, the more you will realize we have nothing to fear from AGW, other than the Alarmism itself, and the consequent and harmful reactions based on that Alarmism.
Doug in Dunedin says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:10 pm
R. Gates says:
“I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW?
So warm R Gates? But what is so warm? It seems to me that this is much ado about nothing. Over the eons temperatures have risen and fallen to higher and lower levels than we are witnessing now over say the last 100 years. You seem to want to attribute this latest to set of variations to human influence. It seems to me that the burden of proof lies with you rather than with the likes of me. I don’t need to prove anything or offer any explanation of what appears to me to be a perfectly acceptable climate.
For my part, I see nothing exceptionally warm about it. For example, we have recorded the coldest temperatures where I live since 1947 and the coldest a little further away since 1871. Our summer wasn’t very warm either– in fact rather dismally cool. So much then for the warmest year on record that you like to quote.
Doug
____________
I’m not picking on Doug here, because I think his comment is very typical of some skeptical mindset. There is s tendency to begin to speak about the weather in your local area, snow in Florida, or personal anecdotes when looking at the climate data. We are talking about a few tenths of a degree here folks, spread out across the entire globe. Unless you happen to live in the Arctic, and your village is experiencing the permafrost melt (that is unquestionably happening), then is very possible that you might not have any personal experience with global warming that you would notice. Moreover, it is entirely possible that the world could be warming due by a few tenths of a degree over the past century, but your local area could be seeing colder weather.
Presently, I choose to accept the validity of the general temperature increases we’ve seen, (even with some minor data issues). The AGW hypothesis does offer a reasonable explanation, but there could be some as yet unknown natural cycle that is causing the warming, or contributing to the rise. I find this less probable then then 40% rise in CO2 since the 1700’s. But as I’ve stated before, I am not a catastrophic believer in AGW, so it is not a make or break political issue with me whether or not humans are causing global warming. It is purely a scientific interest at the present moment, and from a purely scientific perspective, the CO2 induced AGW hypothesis seems the most reasonable. I do find it interesting that true-believers on both sides of the issue gravitate toward political polarities, and this is my first clue that science has been left behind to be replaced by their faith in their cause and their emotions.
Re: Steven Mosher says:
July 16, 2010 at 2:06 pm
From my perspective Mr. Mosher’s “lesson” in logic looks like a typical warmist use of straw man arguments in a boring attempt to negate the scepticism surrounding unsupported claims made by CAGW proponents, not to mention their numerous conflations of coincidence and causality.
savethesharks said:
“That, my friend, is as transparent, as CO2 gas.”
_______
And there’s the rub isn’t it, as CO2 is NOT transparent to all frequencies of electromagnetic raditation. for if it were, we certainly would not be having this discussion, for many different reasons, but namely, we wouldn’t exist as a species, and secondly, if we somehow did exist, we would be discussing the GH global warming potential of CO2.
Finally Chris, I do listen and learn from the scientists and others who frequent WUWT. That is exactly why I’m here. I’ve learned a great deal from many who post here. But I’m also confident enough, after my own personal 25+ years of studying this topic that I know a few things myself, and when I read what I consider to by lame, errant, misguided, muddle-headed, politically motivated statements, I’ve go no problem questioning them.
The truth, you see, is as tranparent as CO2…meaning of course, that you have to really look at it from all angles and realize that it is not transparent at all and will take a bit of work to uncover.
What percentage of the temp spike for the last 18 months is attributed to the El Nino vs humans activity? The moment you can PROVE what that percentage is, I’ll abandon the deniers and sit quietly in the back of your church listening to the AGW doom and gloom.
Can we honestly call this El Nino weak? Or are we calling it weak because of the failing prediction that El Ninos are supposed to get stronger and with more frequency? Even a statistical tie with 1998’s El Nino is a loss for AGW crowd… isn’t it?
Moderator,
Please remove Chris from Norfolks name at the end of my last post. It was an accidental paste and makes it seem like he is to be attributed with my statement. My apologies…
REPLY: Done, Anthony
@toby: “Suppose record temperature anomalies continue to be set in 2011, 2012, 2013 …”
And here’s what realclimate has said one year ago: “If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.”
Same, Prof. Mojib Latif, a leading German climatologist has said a year or two ago, that the expected warming will not show up before another or two decades.
Does it mean that they are sceptics as well now? And you are the one who knows better?
Despite that, some institutions can’t resist and are hunting records, calling out a year the hottest ever after 7 months already.
What I know is that industrialization with increasing use of energy, sure warms part of our environment, what seems to be a good thing.
Instead of showing local weather, surface temperature observation is now misused to indicate climate change. But as time goes, former rural stations became urban or even airport stations and surfacestations.org shows how “super-reliable” thenths of degrees are registered. Then these poor data are even somehow enhanced by people who may have taken Stephen Schneider’s position about science and truth. GIGO.
So I tend to not overestimate the human influence and CO2.
And I can’t stand unscientific alarmism at all.
@R. Gates “…with some minor data issues”
Not sure, if all starts with those readings, as it does, it is “minor” that
– 90% of the US stations do not meet their own organization’s standard, causing a artificial warming
– the net of stations has thinned out on purpose, resulting in an cross-calculated artificial warming
– the general usefulness of once- or twice-a-day readings under specific daily weather patterns, as shown in, for me, enlightening contributions (Theo Goodwin) to this post.
– raw data are treated in different, not always reproducable, ways by employees whose employers are strict followers of AGW.
Again, it all starts with that data and we talk about thenths of a degree …
What do you think?
If you compare the first map with the second, in my neck of the woods, you notice an entire area of below normal temperatures was apparently “homogenized” right off the face of the earth.
To be specific, notice in the second map that most of Maine, and southern Vermont and Northeast New York State, are below normal. Then look at the first map. The entire area is covered by a red dot which, as best as I can tell, indicates two degrees above normal.
Either the second measurements are saying the first are wrong, or the first are saying the second are wrong. As both are put together by NOAA, either NOAA is copping out, or NOAA is copping out, for, after all, Mr. Gates states:
“I think it is a huge cop out to say the measurements are wrong.”
When NOAA homogenized the cold temperatures over Scandinavia right off their map, a few months back, there was such an uproar from Scandinavians that NOAA apparently doesn’t dare do it any more, (judging by the way Scandinavia is an island of blue in Europe in this map.)
Jason S says:
July 17, 2010 at 8:15 am
What percentage of the temp spike for the last 18 months is attributed to the El Nino vs humans activity?
___________
Take a look at the charts on these pages, (click on sun on the right hand side) and see what longer term signal you can see through the “noise” of solar cycles and ENSO:
http://www.climate4you.com/
Especially note the the solar cycles riding atop the longer term up trend. You can also spot the El Nino of 1998 very readily, as well as the level period of no warming during this last solar minimum, with a resumption now in 2010. It is obvious that El Nino played a role in the short term warming, but is not the cause of the longer term up trend. It is obvious that the solar cycle plays a role in short term warming or cooling but is not the cause of the longer term up trend. So let’s be generous and say that this year’s warmth is 40% based on El Nino, and 40% based on the steady growth of CO2 since the 1700’s, and 20% based on the end of the solar minimum and increasing total solar irradiance since 2009. The sun and El Nino are natural cycles that wax and wane, but the longer term upward trend could very well be (and I think likely is) from the steady increase in CO2 over the past few centuries. Note here: not one bit of catastrophic or alarmist talk in my post…no politics for me, just science.
R Gates said:
“The sun and El Nino are natural cycles that wax and wane, but the longer term upward trend could very well be (and I think likely is) from the steady increase in CO2 over the past few centuries.”
You are much in demand here ( I suspect you are really Smokey deciding to have some fun with us 🙂 ) so you could easily have missed the question I posed to you earlier, so I have repeated it as it is very relevant to your comment here;
“Unless you are suddenly going all religious on us and suggesting that man can only exist in a soup of absolutely precise amounts of gases, we need to look at when Co2 can reasonably have started to make an impact. This is surely after 1950 (and doesn’t take into account the life of a CO2 molecule.)
What I find interesting is that-with fits and starts-temperatures have been increasing since our earliest instrumental records.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi
So what I want to know is why have temperatures been increasing for at least 350 years, and why do we place such great store on James Hansen’s figures, who merely showed the continuation of that increase from 1880 with Giss.”
Tonyb
R. Gates says: July 17, 2010 at 11:28 am
………
Mr Gates
You appear to be very well-informed and well-versed with the ways and means of global temperature movements. My problem is I do not live globally, I just happen to live in an area of England which has the longest recorded temperatures anywhere in the world. I like warm winters, sunny springs and autumns, but one thing I am unable to understand: why month of June is being so obstinate and unwilling to shift despite more CO2 and for longer is being emitted here than many other places?
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
If CO2 is evenly distributed in the upper atmosphere, why don’t we here get our fair share in month of June? You might say June and the southern England is not representative of the global state, but that could be said for any place or any month of the year. You might say it needs averaging over wider area or longer period but that would be a weak argument, since you can’t possibly say we should average Arctic with tropics, and here we have 350 years long record.
I do hope you will come up with something good, else your credibility with the readers may suffer badly.
R. Gates says: July 17, 2010 at 7:59 am
There is s tendency to begin to speak about the weather in your local area, snow in Florida, or personal anecdotes when looking at the climate data.—- Moreover, it is entirely possible that the world could be warming due by a few tenths of a degree over the past century, but your local area could be seeing colder weather.
—————————————————————————————
Thanks for your condescension. Well, I might have been relating this in this instance to the local area for this year, but the raw data for NZ shows no warming trend at all since records began in the 19th century here. Of course, you might consider this a local area as well, but from what I can determine, this also seems to be the case elsewhere. From what I can see of the data that you seem to rely on is that it is manipulated data (just as it was in NZ by the CRU acolyte J Salinger) so I take you back to my question what is so warm? The warming that has been manipulated or the warming that is so miniscule that it is of no moment and well within the natural parameters that have been observed over eons?
Doug
We’ve seen the biased machinations performed on temperature data, both by the CRU folks and various faceless bureaucrats in various government agencies. Their work is known as “homogenization”. We’ve seen the problems with the land surface recording stations, the local environmental influences affecting almost every station. Then there are UHI effects which must be”estimated” in order to eliminate that influence from historic data. An analyst with an agenda can bias data in any way desired. We’ve seen the bias in how a massive number of temperature recording stations (thousands of them, almost invariably those at high altitudes, or in colder areas) mysteriously dropped from consideration. The SOP for all these actions, always, is no justification, no documentation, no way to replicate the (now “forgotten) process.
Just in the past day or two we’ve seen (reported on Joanne Nova’s website) yet another kind of of data machination – it’s not just the CRU folks, and it’s not just homogenizsation. This one involves NASA’s machinations with the GISS data and involves extending influence of land temperatures in the northern hemisphere. In effect it makes it look as if it the northern hemisphere surface area is 70% land rather than 30%. How’s that grab ya?
I wouldn’t believe anything claimed by any government agency (or its favorite news media outlet) at this point about anything. However, I have absolutely no problem if it is still warming. My only concern about the continuing b.s. emanating from the warmists (truly the Church of CAGW) is that the government wants to join (if not already a member) that church, and in trying to “save us” will adapt policies (whether based on faulty science dogma or not) which will destroy our nation.
If it’s warming, it’s most likely natural variation, and why not? A few hundred years of warming immediately following 400 to 500 hundred years of The Little Ice Age would seem to be expected. It would be nice if we could explain what’s going on, and that remains worth a honest try.
BUT, when things do start cooling, when there are NO shrinking glaciers, when the sea level begins to drop, THEN there will be time enough to really start worrying. It will be Mother Nature stepping in to do another of her periodic “house-cleanings”.
Think of yourself as little more than potential roadkill. In our case that means speeding around the galaxy and hoping to stay out of the way of something that may well look like oncoming headlights.
June in Slovakia was ~1.2 deg C warmer than 1951-1980 “normal”. Since 1971-2000 “normal” is warmer, the anomaly against 1971-2000 should be even lower. But! NOAA map shows the anomaly to be 2 deg C over here, more than twice the reality.
@R. Gates
You really do like the attention so much so that everything else is frakk all lol, you even go as far as projecting yourself as stupid, assuming it’s just projecting of course.
LMAO, but why don’t you explain it for me?
There are basically two separate debates:
1) How much are temperatures rising?
2) What is the cause of any measured rise?
Debate 1 is answerable by honest experimental data.
Debate 2 is much more difficult. There aren’t multiple Earths with which controlled experments could be performed. There is the “warmist” thesis that it is due to human generated CO2 that is the standard for legislation and press reports. When pressed to defend their conclusions, thay retort ala R. Gates: “So where is the warmth coming from, if not from AGW caused in increases in GHG?”
In my view, this is dishonest science. The history of science is filled with false theories that seemed to fit, remembr Phlogiston, while the correct theories hadn’t yet been thought of or proven.
Ref – Arthur Cohn says:
July 17, 2010 at 6:45 pm
“There are basically two separate debates:…”
______________________________
I’m not disagreeing with your comment, I personally see so many more than two. The fact that so many different groups have pokers in this fire makes it very difficult for everyone; and very confusing. This is why I often use the “Chicken Little” analogy. Many are running around saying “The Sky is falling! The Sky is falling!” (for many different reasons) and a few are shouting –as loud as they can– “No! No! The Sky isn’t falling! Stop! Look! Listen!” Interestingly, the vast majority of the carbon units on planet Earth seem to not be listening to the riot in the barnyard, so I guess there is hope after all.